Fresh off my stream, I saw that we have a massive B&R announcement. My favorite Modern cards ever are all unbanned—Mox Opal, Faithless Looting, and Splinter Twin. Green Sun's Zenith is interesting but not on the same level as these other prolific bangers.
The official WotC B&R:
While it's no secret the world has been cheering for a Twin unban for years, my honest hunch is Twin won't be that powerful in this more explosive, completely juiced Modern format.
It is interesting that we can use it along with Fear of Missing Out to loot through our deck and make a 2/3 attacker per card in our deck. This can't win through a three-power first striker or indestructible creature, but you can also turn any card in your hand into any card in your deck and likely achieve a win. FOMO isn't too bad of a card, so maybe we can just throw some Twins into a normal deck and focus on the combo but have it come together as a supplemental plan.
Twin was a slam dunk unbanning. I doubt it becomes the best thing to do, but it's possible it's squeezed into some decks as a supplemental plan. For the nostalgia and memes alone, it's a WotC win.
Let's move to Faithless Looting. This one is scary, and I'm not sure how many cards broke it in the past few years, but I'm sure there are some. The thing about Faithless Looting is it is mostly used as a graveyard enabler, and there have been countless ways to attack the graveyard put into the ecosystem, especially with cards like Urza's Saga in the format. People can even justify playing a copy or two of a card like Soul-Guide Lantern or Ghost Vaccum in their main decks. Faithless Looting is the second most broken of the unbanned cards. While Twin may or may not flop, Looting will definitely find a home.
Unbanning Looting will bring Modern back to what it felt like before all the Modern Horizons sets, at least partly. I'm fully on board with the unbanning, yet another WotC win. It may even find a home in something broken and with the actual best card on the list, Mox Opal.
Mox Opal is an obscene Magic card and should have been on the Modern ban list from the jump. Since its banning, we have gotten a bevy of cards that enable and potentially break Mox. That's the thing about cards like Mox Opal and even Mox Amber—the more cards get added to a format, the better these cards get because the cost of inclusion in your decks diminishes. A card like Splinter Twin is capped at what it can do. You can print all the Deceiver Exarchs you want, but it's not going to change the functionality of the card. Mox Opal, however, will continue to get better the more cards are printed.
If I were a diehard Modern fan who vigorously managed my Modern collection, I'd be scared to invest in Mox Opals. My hunch is that Mox will be so good that it will inevitably get banned again. While it's by far my favorite card in Modern and one of my favorite cards ever printed, I won't call it a WotC lose, but it will end up being one if they have to ban it in the next 12 to 18 months.
Mox Opal is easily the most breakable card from the unban list and may be the most broken card in Modern now. It will be interesting to see how the format develops both utilizing Mox Opal and how decks are built to react to the card.
Green Sun's Zenith should have never been banned. Its flexibility is desirable, and it's fun to use for deck building. Think Birthing Pod but not a one-card combo. Dryad Arbor was the excuse to ban it, but keeping Arbor in the format for so long and not GSZ was a mistake. Green Sun's Zenith would have made for interesting decks and card choices. GSZ is a solid card. It's unlikely to break the format and will add a lot of value to the format. This is a very good unban.
I will abstain from commenting on the Legacy bans, but from where I'm sitting, banning Frog was high on people's list of things to help the format. I'm glad to see those people getting their desired outcome.
Jegantha banned in Pioneer and Modern is interesting. It's a great ban because of the card's ubiquitousness. As far as I'm concerned, just ban all the companions in Constructed but keep the presses rolling on them in Limited. The best Limited mechanic ever happens to be one of the worst Constructed mechanics ever because the puzzle isn't that interesting. In Limited, you're asked on the fly to meet certain conditions while only using a small amount of tools. In Constructed, it's either good or not or your deck already meets the conditions, so why not take a free 8 mana 5/5. That's where Jegantha was. I'll be happy adding a 15th SB slot over a random 5/5 I rarely used. Yorion (Pioneer), you're next.
The other bans are mostly what people expected. The One Ring was not long for this world and got tossed into Mount Doom as it was always intended. Those blinded by its power will suffer financial consequences. While it's a cool card for Commander and Cube, it's not a great experience when everyone plays four.
The most confusing of the bans is perhaps Amped Raptor. While it's one of the weaker cards banned in Modern in a vacuum, a new member of WotC and friend of mine Abe Corrigan had this exchange on X with Matti Kuisma.
This makes a lot of sense and is how they've handled other bannings in the past. In fact, Amped Raptor isn't even the worst Dinosaur ever banned in the past decade. Rampaging Ferocidon takes the cake there and was banned for similar reasons, which was to weaken but not destroy a powerful deck. I can get behind the idea of dinging a deck a bit to keep it in check.
Overall, I like the approach of shaking things up. Magic's biggest weakness is how quickly it can become stale at the competitive level, so shaking things up is always something I'm eager about and for the first time in nearly a decade I'm curious about Modern. This was likely the desired effect—bringing people back who have lost interest by turning Modern back into what it used to be. Maybe, just maybe, I'll play Modern sometime.
WotC did a good job this go. I'm still perplexed how a card like Ponder is banned when cards nearly at its power level, like Preordain, aren't present in the format because spending mana for card selection is mostly a thing of the past. I'm happy it's banned because waiting for players to resolve it is more annoying than waiting for a shuffle after a fetch. From a power-level perspective, Ponder and many other cards are safe to release from prison.
I'm sure we'll see more unbannings in the future. For now, let's enjoy casting some Moxen while we can.
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